


Intertwined

by breathtaken



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Athos/d'Artagnan (Background), Canon Era, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 20:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6128672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“When a man tells you he loves you best, he means he loves you more than anyone except himself.” She says it so matter-of-factly, though Constance thinks she can imagine just how hard the lesson must have been. “However sorry he is to hurt you, it’s not enough to stop. And the only way he will ever truly understand your pain is when you hurt him as he’s hurt you.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intertwined

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mimesere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimesere/gifts).



> Set mid-Series 2, while Milady is the King's mistress and before Constance and d’Artagnan’s reunion.

****Constance barely knows how long she’s been sitting there, slumped along the chaise in Milady’s private rooms, just feet from his Majesty’s own chambers. It feels like a lifetime, and no time at all; and she barely realises how much she’s drunk until she drains the bottle dry, setting it unsteadily on the polished boards and letting her head fall into her hands, muttering something that might have been an oath.

She doesn’t quite know if she sought Milady out or Milady sought her – or neither – though she’s a woman who has always had the air of knowing far more than she ought, and it might be concerning or even amusing if Constance could still feel anything at all. If she hadn’t worn herself out with just that, worn her heart right out –

She opens her eyes again, because it’s better than keeping them closed, and blinks in surprise when she really _sees,_ for the first time in a while: dusk has started to fall without her noticing, and Milady is slowly circling the room, lighting candle after candle from the one she holds in her hand, though Constance doesn’t remember ever hearing the striking flint.

She can’t help wondering just what else has escaped her notice.

“Well, then,” Milady says, moving to the next candelabra, not turning around. “My husband, and yours.”

Constance feels suddenly nauseous.

She _can_ still feel, then; and she isn’t ready for this, not remotely, though she can’t quite imagine Milady cares.

“I must say, I didn’t think he had it in him. D’Artagnan that is.” She sounds _amused._ Light and arch, as if they were trading court gossip rather than speaking of something that until tonight, Constance would have thought entirely unspeakable – even unimaginable. “Well, you know what they say about soldiers.”

She finally turns her head – and her gaze is sharp, sharp enough to pierce right through to Constance’s chest.

“But you don’t, do you?”

“Beg pardon?” Constance asks, mostly out of politeness.

Never mind anything else, she can barely make sense of this _conversation._

Instead of explaining herself, Milady places the last candle in the empty hollow of the candelabra before turning fully, clasping her hands in front of her, and asking, “Why did you tell me?”

Why, indeed?

“…I don’t know.”

“Yes you do,” Milady argues, though not unkindly. “Curiosity. You wanted to see if I would be shocked, or even surprised. If a woman like me, who has seen so much more of the world – in all its facets – could comprehend what you find so incomprehensible.”

Constance can’t help asking, “Can you?”

Now it’s out there, she recognises the truth of it immediately: curiosity has always been her failing. If she had been able to leave well alone then she wouldn’t be sitting here now, light-headed from the wine and feeling as though the entire world has rearranged itself about her and set everything off-kilter, and yet she seems the only one disoriented.

She hasn’t cried.

It’s strange. She would have thought she’d cry.

In lieu of an answer, Milady sinks down beside her on the chaise, carefully rearranging her skirts with the grace of a born lady – before producing another full bottle of wine seemingly from nowhere, and pulling the cork free with her teeth. “Can I give you some advice? Learn to be selfish. I’ll teach you, if you like. Or you can just follow your paramour’s example.”

Constance wrests the bottle none-too-gently from her grip and takes a long drink, because it’s easier than speaking.

The drapes are still open, and as she watches the clouds part to reveal the moon, just a sliver of a thing in the darkening sky.

“I was, once. Selfish,” she says at last, “and… it scared me.”

She isn’t sure for a moment if Milady will understand; but her smile is a sliver too, and she asks, as if she isn’t expecting an answer, “The power, or the powerlessness?”

In the silence that follows, her hand covers Constance’s around the neck of the bottle.

“When a man tells you he loves you best, he means he loves you more than anyone except himself.” She says it so matter-of-factly, though Constance thinks she can imagine just how hard the lesson must have been. “However sorry he is to hurt you, it’s not enough to stop. And the only way he will ever truly understand your pain is when you hurt him as he’s hurt you.”

The idea tastes like wine upon her tongue.

“I left him,” Constance points out, though it’s weak even to her own ears.

“Not enough.” Milady’s smile is slow now, feline. “I mean payment in kind.”

Constance doesn’t understand until there’s a hand at her jaw, tilting it upwards, and one soft press of lips upon hers.

For a moment, everything stops.

“What are you doing?” she asks, when she’s finally recovered something of herself; trying to sound cold, but really just sounding scared.

Milady doesn’t answer her question. It seems to be something of a pattern.

Instead she winds a lock of Constance’s hair around her finger in a manner Constance remembers well and still isn’t sure she likes, “It’s a sin, isn’t it? At least, that’s what they tell you. Two men, lying together as man and woman. What about woman and woman, do you think?”

Constance’s head is spinning, thoughts grasping for a foothold, for an idea just out of reach. “I don’t –”

“No.” Milady smiles, sharp-edged. “Neither do they.”

If she’s trying to make the way her fingers rest over the pulse in Constance’s neck look like an accident, it isn’t working. Her touch is cool and she smells only faintly of jasmine, not the heavy, almost overwhelming fragrance that Constance remembers, lingering long after she had departed.

“Our fates are already intertwined. You and d’Artagnan, Athos and I… Athos and d’Artagnan. D’Artagnan and I.” Her fingers fall to the hollow of Constance’s throat, and Constance heaves a breath that’s heavier than she likes.

“I wouldn’t lie with Athos,” she protests – and only realises it’s the wrong thing to say when Milady smiles as if she’s won and replies:

“But you would with me?”

What would that even _mean_?

Constance could die of shame to realise she suddenly, _desperately_ wants to know.

“You can’t seduce me,” she hears herself say: it’s a warning, though she couldn’t say which of them it’s for.

Milady watches her for a long moment before agreeing, “I know.”

This time, Constance kisses her back.


End file.
